Quick HDD buying advice

[Spit-wad]

Wasn't going to buy until a week or two from now, but the hard drive I was looking at just went on sale.

Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Will these work fine if I got 3 of them in a RAID 5? Some of the Newegg reviews suggest that this drive isn't good for a raid setup.

Also some of the reviews mention the 4k sectors and dealing with them... do I need to worry about that?

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Larger drives like that, in general for some reason just aren't best when used in a RAID array unless its like RAID 1. I have a feeling it's due to access times.

 

[Spit-wad]

So then what do I do if I want at least 4TB backed up? It's just for a HTPC.

 

[Slaymate]

It won't be the "Fastest" Raid Array, but it will still be faster than a single stand alone drive. If you want faster look for a Blue or Black WD Drive

 

[Spit-wad]

Well for a HTPC I wouldn't think that it would need to be very fast... it's just going to be for storage. I have a 1TB of that drive that I currently use to store movies and it works fine. + I'm looking to save money here...

 

[Slaymate]

I wouldn't even bother Raiding them then, you'll get 6TB instead of 4TB or you could save the cash and only get 2 drives. Enable the SMART drive feature and monitor the drive occasionally for reliability. With the exception of a power supply burning out a few drives I've never had a drive go bad that I didn't know it was coming.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

If you are worried about it being reliable, do a Raid 5 array, with it being an HTPC it won't matter as much since you will only be using it for playing back and recording multimedia.

 

[Spit-wad]

I'm somewhat obsessed about having my stuff backed up.

On another forum I asked

So if I want 4TB, you think it's better for me to get 4x2TB drives and have them just backup to each other, rather than getting 3x2TB drives and doing a RAID5?

which I got the reply

Yes x1000, if you dont need RAID for uptime then true backups are much more reliable.

So you agree with this, Slaymate?
Although if my power supply were to have a problem, my backup wouldn't do me much good if it was an internal drive connected to the same power supply, right?

 

[Slaymate]

I believe in Backup's

You never know with a power supply. I've had them go out multiple times with no additional problems arising. But I had a Power Supply "POP" once and it killed every drive I had. I felt lucky that only the drives were damaged thou.

 

[Spit-wad]

Well maybe I'll just suck it up and use the SMART thing and not have a backup... it will at least save me a lot of money.